1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to an automatic manipulator-head trajectory producing system for automatically producing a trajectory of a manipulator head on the basis of an execution environment of the manipulator.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, operations of a manipulator are often required in extreme environments such as atomic power plants, submarines, and outer space where it is impossible for persons to directly work. The manipulators used for such ultimate environments must be remote-controlled at a distance from working sites thereof.
Conventionally, the remote operations of the manipulators have been performed based on a master/slave system. The remote operation system by a master/slave system is separated into an execution system arranged at the working site and an operation system arranged at a supervising center.
The execution system has a slave manipulator, a robot controller, a supervising camera, a camera control apparatus, and a communication control section. On the other hand, the operation system has a master manipulator, a robot controller, a monitor, and a communication control section. In such systems, the slave manipulator is remotely operated by a person who operates the manipulator (hereinafter simply referred to as "an operator") operating the master manipulator.
However, in this system, the operator cannot directly observe the working site, and is required to work depending on a limited number of observation cameras. A problem arises in that an increased time for carrying out the operation is required because the operator must always work while being careful to avoid collisions of the manipulator.
An effective method of reducing such an operator's burden includes realizing an autonomous operation of the manipulator. In particular, it is significantly effective to achieve the autonomous operation for a manipulator-head trajectory producing function. A prior art method of achieving autonomous operation Of the manipulator-head trajectory has been that a working space of the manipulator is partitioned into a mesh in a horizontal plane and a vertical plane (in other words, the working space of the manipulator is divided into a small cubic space) and then based on the resultant mesh the manipulator-head trajectory is searched.
However in this method, an accuracy of the manipulator-head trajectory depends on the partitioning number in the mesh, and this results in a problem that, to obtain a manipulator-head trajectory having less interference with obstacles, a memory capacity must be increased. Further, a complicated research process must be repeated at every partitioning point, and thus a considerably increased time is disadvantageously required for producing the manipulator-head trajectory.
As hereinbefore described in relation to the prior art, the mesh is employed for automatically producing the trajectory of the manipulator-head, and the problem is requirement of a larger capacity memory and a large amount of operation time.